RE: Bitcoin to be the best performing asset into year end?
The institutions are creating the options market infrastructure for bitcoin so that they can control and manipulate the price. Just like they do with gold and silver markets. Also with high frequency trading applied to the blockchain the institutions will be able to fleece the little guys. Just my opinion but I believe generally that the mainstream legitimization equals control. The price will go up but limits will be set by those big players that can issue billions in "paper" bitcoin like they do with silver. Nothing can Stop the blockchain but it can be controlled. Just look at the trading shenanigans going on at Bitfinex recently before the split. That price manipulation was done without options trading and a tiny fraction of the money and hypothecation that will eventually come in to the BTC market. Being accepted into the club is great being subjected to the status quo not so great!
What people don't seem to understand, is the little guy is going to have the technology that the big guys have. Actually the little guys will understand the markets and applications comprehensively, while the big guys will have to learn from scratch. Many of the little guys have 5+ years of trading experience, and these little guys are building the platforms that understand the bitcoin/crypto market
I do understand that the little guy has a head start on this but it won't take long for the big guys to buy up more BTC than the little guys. Some hedge funds are already in the game with millions of dollars in BTC. They just hired a crypto geek and were off and running.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/20/investing/mike-novogratz-bets-big-on-bitcoin-ether-blockchain/index.html
It's just uncertain what kind of control they are going to exert on the price down the road. Hedges funds are there to hedge by selling short thats how they make money with leverage and derivatives. The Bitcoin cap is relatively small compared to the rest of the markets and the amount of capital the big guys have to throw around is staggering. Not much we can do but hold on tight to our BTC and sit back and watch.
A group of whale dominate the market,
I agree with you, decentralized didn't work this day
Its a pessimistic view but i tend to agree. The little guys may have got here first and understand how the ins and outs of blockchain works and how to create their own voting bots etc. But the big guys know how to manipulate the price. Hopefully we will make money anyway but the individual gold rush prospectors did not turn into the mining houses we know today despite being first.
HFT may not be possible given the transaction capability of the network so there is one equalizer for the little guy. I agree with your sentiments on the amount of capital these funds have is staggering but if you are long on BTC this makes for an excellent exit from the asset class the only problem is that the barrier to entry will be a very high bar if the prediction of $55K were to ever come to fruition.